Cameras, laser scanners and ultrasonic sensors help the bots both navigate parking areas and find a car’s charging port. Several of these machines could operate in a single garage.
VW said it hadn’t “yet” decided on a possible release date for the charging robot. A rollout would likely depend on a number of factors, including the ability to recognize and use various charging ports. These bots wouldn’t be very useful if they only supported VW-made cars, after all.
Technology like this could be vital whenever it does arrive. If EVs are going to dominate the market, there will need to be enough chargers to go around — and it won’t be realistic to outfit every parking spot with a dedicated station. This could ensure that there’s always a recharge available when you need it, even in parking garages where dedicated charging spots would be impractical.
“Next year is 2020, and 20 is a new beginning,” they said in a follow-up tweet — without elaborating what exactly a “new beginning” means. In the absence of more concrete evidence, all we have to support Ice’s claims is that it would make sense for Samsung to call its next phone the S20 for a couple of reasons.
One of the more compelling ones is that by aligning the phone’s model number with the year, Samsung will make it easier for casual consumers to know which phone to buy if they want the company’s latest and greatest. Additionally, skipping S11 would mean the S-series would once again be ahead of the iPhone in terms of their model numbers. It’s also worth pointing out, Samsung wouldn’t be the first manufacturer to do something like this. Huawei skipped P11 when it announced the P20 in 2018. Likewise, Samsung itself skipped the Note 6 when it wanted to align its two flagship series together.
As usual, it’s best to be skeptical of these types of rumors. While Ice has a good track when it comes to pre-release leaks, they haven’t been consistent about calling the phone the S20 either. Case and point: in another, more recent tweet from this week, Ice referred to Samsung’s trio of early 2020 phones as the S11e, S11 and S11+. Ice also tweeted about Samsung’s next foldable phone this week, sharing a new image of the device and corroborating a rumor that it will feature a glass cover that’s less prone to creasing.
The shuffle will bring Stadia Pro’s total bonus catalog to five games. That’s certainly better than what Google offered on launch, but it still leaves a core problem unaddressed: the selection of freebies isn’t particularly strong. There’s neither an abundance of games nor any must-haves. Of course, that’s part of why Stadia will have a free tier — you can focus on buying newer titles if you feel Pro’s included games aren’t worth the subscription fee.
The Videos tab shows a new column called “Restrictions,” which lets creators quickly see which uploads are affected. Clicking through shows details like which parts of the video contain the offending media, who initiated the claim and who owns the copyrighted content. If the claim is for a piece of music, the user can replace or mute the track. If it’s for a piece of video, the new Trim option “can trim out copyrighted content claimed by Content ID in your video which automatically releases the claim,” according to a post in the YouTube support forums. The feature currently pre-sets the in and out points according to Content ID’s algorithm. Google says it is working on a version with adjustable endpoints, but the YouTube Editor can achieve the same results in the meantime.
This update will help creators keep their videos monetized, but it doesn’t address the underlying issue. Corporations still hold nearly all the power when it comes to copyright disputes, and YouTube does not mediate between creators and rights holders. Even if a claim is made in error — or if a company is abusing the system — users have very little recourse beyond cutting out the video sections in question.
In total, that’s approximately 272 hours, or more than 11 days, of content. And BritBox says it’s part of a long-term collaboration with the BBC to make BritBox the “ultimate home of Doctor Who Classic” content.
“We are looking forward to expanding the collection even further by working with the show creators to lovingly restore lost and previously unavailable episodes in the months to come and offering a truly exclusive experience,” said Reemah Sakaan, group director of ITV subscription video on demand (SVOD).
BritBox, the streaming service co-owned by British broadcasters BBC and ITV, became the exclusive home for the entire library of classic Doctor Who in the US in 2017. BritBox arrived in the UK in July 2019, but it wasn’t guaranteed that BritBox in the UK would include Doctor Who. The BBC still makes plenty of money off the show through DVD and Blu-ray sales, and it may lose some of those customers to the £5.99 per month subscription service.
Using a combination of publicly-available records, the WSJ estimates Huawei received $46 billion in loans and lines of credit from state-controlled lenders, as well as $1.6 billion in grants. The company was also able to save as much as $25 billion in taxes between 2008 and 2018 thanks to incentives aimed at China’s tech companies, and $2 billion on land purchases.
Chinese diplomats may have also helped the company. According to court documents obtained by the WSJ, the Chinese government helped Huawei close a deal in Pakistan by offering the country’s government a $124.7 million loan through the Export-Import Bank of China. The state-controlled bank waived most of the three percent annual interest on the 20-year loan. The catch, however, was that Pakistan’s government had to skip its usual competitive bidding process and award the contract to Huawei.
Huawei responded to the article in a series of tweets and a lengthy statement posted earlier today. “Once again, the WSJ has published untruths about Huawei based on false information. This time, wild accusations about Huawei’s finances ignore our 30 years of dedicated investments in R&D that have driven innovation and the tech industry as a whole,” the company said. Huawei also said that it reserved the right to take legal action against the WSJ for “a number of disingenuous and irresponsible articles.”
Huawei emphasized its research and development spending as the reason for its ongoing success, noting that over the last 30 years it has spent between 10 to 15 percent of its annual revenue developing new technologies and products. It also denied receiving any special treatment from the Chinese government.
As the Wall Street Journal itself notes, most governments help their country’s biggest companies. Boeing, for example, has frequently benefited from financial support from the US government. Moreover, the amount of financial assistance Huawei received, if accurate, is probably just as much a reflection of the scale at which China does things as it is an example of any type of favoritism. In the past, Huawei has tried to refute suggestions that it has close ties with the Chinese government by alternately taking an aggressive stance against its critics, and offering to license its 5G patents to competitors.
On a recent episode of YouTuber Brian Davis’ The True Geordie Podcast, Ninja explained that he had “wanted to make it work” with Twitch and spent roughly eight months trying to renegotiate with the company. The streamer wanted “a little bit more freedom,” he told Davis, but couldn’t come to an agreement. “They just weren’t budging,” he said.
Ninja’s interview with Brian “True Geordie” Davis.
Blevins and his team then started talking to Mixer. Within two weeks, he told Davis, all the negotiations were complete. “It was so simple, so quick,” the live streaming superstar recalled. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, though some have suggested it is worth $50 million.
The departure was an unexpected blow to Twitch. Still, a single streamer — even one that many consider the face of Fortnite, a battle royale pop-culture phenomenon — didn’t have the viewership to completely disrupt and dethrone a platform. Twitch simply had to move forward and ensure Ninja’s move was a rare exception.
The situation worsened, though, when Twitch started recommending other Fortnite streamers on Ninja’s now-dormant channel. “I wanted to say something,” Blevins told Davis. “But I [knew that] people would just flame me for it. There would be too many people who were like, ‘Oh well you left man, so they can do whatever they want.'” The Adidas and Red Bull-sponsored streamer stayed quiet until a pornographic video popped up as one of the channel’s suggested streams. For a professional gamer with a family-friendly image, it was a nightmare scenario. “Disgusted and so sorry,” he tweeted on August 11th.
The NSFW imagery was a PR disaster for Twitch.
The NSFW imagery was a PR disaster for Twitch. Emmett Shear, the company’s CEO, apologized to Ninja and explained that the platform had been “experimenting” with suggested streams to help viewers discover new creators. “However, the lewd content that appeared on the Ninja offline channel page grossly violates our terms of service, and we’ve permanently suspended the account in question,” he said on Twitter. “We have also suspended these recommendations while we investigate how this content came to be promoted.”
Blevin’s turbulent departure was counterbalanced with a near-perfect Mixer launch. For a limited period, anyone could nab a one-month channel subscription — which now costs $5.99 per month — and access various perks, such as custom emotes and ad-free streams. The deal, combined with Blevin’s popularity and the interest surrounding his switch, helped the mega-star influencer rack up over one million subscribers in his first week.
Ninja’s Mixer deal announcement video.
The Mixer deal had a ripple effect in the industry. In October, Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek, a fellow streamer that works with talent agency Loaded, signed an exclusive deal with Mixer. Rapper Offset partnered with live streaming service Caffeine later that month, while Cory “King Gothalion” Michael joined Mixer and Fortnite powerhouse Lachlan Ross Power signed a contract with YouTube Gaming.
High-profile streamers, it seemed, had suddenly realized their value. Yes, they all need a home, and Twitch has the largest live streaming viewership on the internet. At the same time, though, the Amazon-owned company needs creators who can champion its platform and attract viewers, advertisers and up-and-coming streamers. If creators leave in droves, that’s a huge problem for the platform — the video game equivalent of an artist exodus from Spotify or Apple Music, or every TV network pulling their shows off Netflix.
“The platforms have changed their thought process around influencers, the content they create and the value associated with that,” Brandon Freytag, founder of Loaded told Engadget. “They’ve now said ‘Okay, we understand that this content and this person and this IP is valuable beyond the standard that’s created.'”
“It’s not just that they’re leaving for money. They’re changing the way that they monetize.”
The Twitch exodus proves that streamers are interested in the money that rival platforms can offer them. Exclusivity payments — some of which are paid in regular instalments, rather than one lump sum — are a guaranteed source of income that removes some of the pressure to stream every day and consistently attract new subscriptions and donations. “It provides that extra layer of security,” Devin Nash, CMO of streaming talent agency N3RDFUSION said in a YouTube video.”It’s not just that they’re leaving for money. They’re changing the way that they monetize.”
The financial safety net also allows streamers to experiment with new types of content — vlogs, podcasts, unboxings and more — and work toward being a mainstream ‘celebrity’ without worrying about the impact it will have on their monthly paycheck. “Some [creators] just want to focus on streaming,” Freytag explained, “and those platform deals are associated and focused around that goal. And then there are others like the [Ninja] situation, where it allows them to get out and go to Europe and travel, and do all these [other sorts of] things.”
Courage’s YouTube Gaming announcement video.
That flexibility encouraged more streamers to leave Twitch in November. Jack “CouRage” Dunlop, another streamer represented by Loaded, joined YouTube Gaming in part because he already had a massive following on YouTube. Soleil “Ewok” Wheeler, a deaf 13-year-old Fortnite pro and member of gaming team Faze Clan, struck a deal with Mixer less than two weeks later, before Hearthstone player Jeremy “Disguised Toast” Wang signed an exclusive deal with Facebook Gaming.
Many live-streaming fans are unhappy with these deals. Some hate the specific ‘big tech’ companies that are behind Twitch alternatives. Others don’t want to platform hop to keep up with their favorite streamers, or they think that Facebook, Mixer or YouTube offer an inferior experience for viewers.
Frustrated fans are also asking an obvious question: Is the money worth a huge drop in viewership and, potentially, long-term relevancy? Possibly. Some streamers are discovering that the audience dip isn’t so bad. According to live-streaming specialist StreamElements, Twitch had a 75.6 percent audience share in Q3 2019, while YouTube Gaming, Facebook Gaming and Mixer had 17.6 percent, 3.7 percent and 3.2 percent, respectively. Ninja, meanwhile, is attracting roughly 10,000 viewers on Mixer, down from 30,000 on Twitch.
Many live-streaming fans are unhappy with these deals.
“Hypothetically, I should have had 2,500 viewers every single stream,” Blevins told Davis on The True Geordie Podcast. “It’s actually incredible. I still get people who are like, ‘only 8,000, only 9,000 [viewers]?’ And I’m like ‘homie, do you know how great that is on this platform right now?'”
Some high-profile streamers have experienced a larger plunge in viewership after leaving Twitch. But there’s a chance these creators actually prefer a smaller community. Those who jumped platform with them are likely the fans who will provide financial support and be positive in the text-based chat room that runs alongside their streams. Sure, the concurrent views might be lower, but do they really matter if all those extra people were stressful to moderate and never contributed a dime to their income?
Big news, I’m moving.
Excited to reach more people around the world, continue to give back and lose bets to chat.
Disguised Toast announcing his switch to Facebook Gaming.
The big streamers who left Twitch are hoping they can build and eventually surpass their previous subscriber numbers, too. YouTube Gaming, Facebook Gaming and Mixer are dramatically smaller than Twitch, but all three live in the shadow of a larger user base that could, if leveraged correctly, help them surpass the market leader. YouTube Gaming, for instance, has swathes of dedicated viewers who have never watched a live stream and only consume on-demand uploads. Facebook, meanwhile, has over a billion social network users, and Microsoft-owned Mixer is intertwined with the Xbox, Game Pass and xCloud ecosystem.
Microsoft’s next console, for instance — a PC tower-shaped box called the Xbox Series X — has a controller with a dedicated Share button, which will almost certainly support Mixer. “Mixer has over 30 million monthly active users and has grown rapidly since its launch in May 2017,” a Microsoft spokesperson told Engadget. “Since that time, the total number of hours that viewers have spent watching content each month has grown nearly 17x.”
These conversions aren’t guaranteed, though. YouTube Gaming, for instance, once had a dedicated site and app that massively flopped. And Facebook Gaming is buried in a part of the social network that many people are unaware of.
Many creators feel ignored by the people who run the gargantuan platform.
Still, there are other reasons streamers have abandoned Twitch. Many creators feel ignored by the people who run the gargantuan platform, for instance. Some are also unhappy with the company’s moderation rules and decisions. As part of their exclusive deals, Mixer, Facebook and YouTube can promise better access to people who can fix problems. “On any given day, a creator will hear from and interact with a partner manager, an engineer or a product manager,” a Facebook Gaming spokesperson told Engadget. “We also spend a lot of time thinking about how we maintain this level of close interaction as we scale and add more creators to the program.”
In addition, there’s a chance Twitch’s rivals offer better support — both on a technical and business-management level — to help them set up charity events, regular guest appearances and other projects they might not have done before. “Working closer with Xbox is not only going to help us propel what we’re doing, but also propel what has always been important to the channel, which is doing good in gaming,” King Gothalion said on Twitter. “Everything from helping broadcasters establish themselves, mentoring the growing broadcasters, raising money for charity and putting on events like GuardianCon and GCX. It just made sense to have a partnership like this.”
Platforms can sweeten the deal, too, with early access to new platform features and, in special cases, lucrative content. Amazon owns Thursday Night Football, for instance, which allows select creators to broadcast the games with their own commentary. In a rare moment of financial transparency, Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Juju Smith-Schuster revealed on stream that he was paid $100,000 to watch an NFL game with Timothy “TimTheTatman” Betar. Mixer, meanwhile, could give Ninja an early look at the next Halo shooter, and Facebook has the ability to connect creators with the team at Instagram — one of the most important social networks for influencers — to ensure they’re using its tools effectively.
December was a turning point for Twitch, though. The month started with popular Smash Bros. streamer Gonzalo “ZeRo” Barrios and two Spanish creators, xFaRgAnx and Augustin51, signing for Facebook Gaming. But then three massive streamers represented by Loaded — Benjamin “DrLupo” Lupo, Saqib “LIRIK” Zahid and TimTheTatman — announced they were sticking with Twitch. Esports consultant Rod “Slasher” Breslau suggested that these deals were worth “millions of dollars per year.”
It’s another turning point for the industry. Unlike YouTube, which has effectively zero competition in the user-uploaded video space, Twitch has some rivals it needs to take seriously. The Amazon-owned company is still the market leader, but now has to fight harder — and spend money when necessary — to lock down talent and stop them from switching to Mixer, Facebook Gaming, YouTube Gaming and Caffeine.
Creators, meanwhile, are starting to experiment with their personal brands and businesses. The biggest streamers can still earn an enviable wage from subscriptions and donations, but many are now looking to evolve and diversify beyond that, with merchandise, podcasts and startup ventures. “Michael Jordan, he didn’t just play basketball, he created a shoe with Nike and a brand around that with Air Jordan and grew that to the point where he makes more money on that than he does playing basketball,” Freytag explained. The pressure is now on Twitch to figure out its role in that transition and the best way it can support some of the industry’s most ambitious creators.
Turkey censored Wikipedia in April 2017, leveraging a law that allows it to ban any website that is deemed a national security threat. Wikimedia, the site’s parent company, swiftly took action, but lost its push to reverse the court’s decision. The community-driven website has remained inaccessible to Turkish citizens ever since.
The ruling was finally reversed by Turkey’s Constitutional Court, which is the country’s highest court. Its decision is a win for both Turkish citizens and Wikipedia itself. The website took a firm stance against censorship, refusing Turkey’s request to remove content that the government found objectionable. It may have taken several years, but the organization came out victorious while sticking to its ideals.
This year, Apple made some moves to simplify its laptop lineup, including an upgrade to the MacBook Pro which included an eighth-gen Intel quad-core processor, better speakers and a True Tone display. At $1,299 (to start), the newest model of Pro is now only $200 more than the Air. Deputy Managing Editor Nathan Ingraham found the slight price upgrade was well worth it for users who intended to push their machines performance-wise. He wound up awarding the device a respectable score of 86.
Facebook, Amazon and other Silicon Valley failures
Nicole Lee Senior Editor
If 2018 was the year that the world turned on big tech, then 2019 was the year that tech became more like a villain. Sure, companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon would say they do a world of good by bringing people together, serving you information wherever and delivering packages to your door. But in the course of doing all of that, they’ve also made several missteps, mishandling customers’ private data, enabling misinformation and creating toxic environments for their employees.
Facebook was arguably the worst offender this year. The company did try to make up for last year’s failings with new privacy-focused efforts, but it has continued to screw up. Not only was it caught storing millions of passwords in plain text, it also stubbornly declined to take down false information. It wouldn’t remove a fake Nancy Pelosi video from earlier this year, and it refused to ban false ads from politicians. Sure, Facebook might have a network of fact checkers to prevent dissemination of fake news, but that’s pointless if politicians are still allowed to spread misinformation.
But perhaps one of the most pressing issues plaguing the tech industry is how it treats its own rank-and-file. Google has allegedly retaliated against employees for their workplace activism, even going so far as to fire a few of them. Other companies have faced similar accusations: Kickstarter was accused of union-busting after firing two employees, and suitcase maker Away was also exposed for its toxic work environment where employees were threatened into working extra hours without compensation. Many Silicon Valley investors even leapt to Away’s defense, showing how widespread this problem might be. It’s indicative of a dangerous culture: one that demands excessive labor and blind loyalty. It’s that toxic mindset that is one of the key failings of the industry. Hopefully, the spotlight shone on these issues in 2019 will pave the way for better behavior in 2020 and beyond.
Google Stadia
Jessica Conditt Senior Editor
Google’s cloud-gaming service, Stadia, is not the worst. It’s fine, actually, and often verges on good. After decades of stuttering through pseudo-cloud-gaming services like OnLive and PlayStation Now (it doesn’t and never has worked, you guys), Google’s platform is refreshing. Stadia is proof that cloud gaming is theoretically possible in 2019, bringing titles like Red Dead Redemption 2 and Destiny 2 to players on Chromecast Ultras, laptops, tablets and smartphones with minimal lag and completely playable graphics. Well, under the right circumstances.
Unfortunately, the right circumstances are rare. Stadia may be the best cloud-gaming service in history, but it still has plenty of problems. Due to internet infrastructure issues outside of Google’s control, Stadia is inconsistent, unreliable and temperamental. No one can see the service as a replacement for traditional locally stored gaming.
This wouldn’t be a problem if Google hadn’t promised all of these things, and more, in the run-up to Stadia’s launch. Google revealed the service in March, and even then executives were talking about seamless 4K (and even 8K) streaming and sharing games with friends through links alone. The week before launch, Stadia boss Phil Harrison tweeted that every title on the service would support 4K. This was proven to be blatantly untrue even days before Stadia went live.
Stadia has issues, and Google knows it. The company stifled its launch, charging $130 for access and pausing sharing options off the bat. Wireless play with the Stadia controller is locked to TVs only, and both Red Dead Redemption 2 and Destiny 2 run in upscaled, not actual, 4K.
Simply put, Google promised too much, too soon. If Stadia had launched as a beta (which it essentially is after Google restricted access and features), it could have easily been in the Best column for 2019. Instead, Google over promised on cloud gaming, just like plenty of companies before — and that’s a disappointment, every time.
5G
Cherlynn Low Reviews Editor
When the industry was first getting together to come up with the 5G standard, the target date for the rollout was initially set for 2020. And yet, because carriers couldn’t help trying to one-up each other, 5G became the victim of confusion and customer fatigue in 2019. We kicked the year off with AT&T’s 5GE debacle, where the carrier decided to roll out the confusing label for its customers despite not having activated technologies that were part of the standard. This prompted Verizon (Engadget’s parent company) to write a stern letter to its competitor, while T-Mobile took to Twitter to mock the move. Sprint decided to take things further and sue AT&T over the branding, and the two companies ultimately settled out of court.
Meanwhile, carriers raced to see who could be the first to deploy real 5G networks. But between understanding the differences between technologies like millimeter wave (mmwave) and sub-6 GHz, as well as the ruckus over the 5GE fiasco, consumers were left with a lot of noise and not a lot of real-world examples of benefits. Even though we did makestrides towards a widespread 5G rollout, there also weren’t a lot of 5G-ready devices to choose from.
Smartphones that worked with the networks were exorbitant, so you had to be a relatively wealthy early adopter to spring for one. Plus, with most carriers currently focusing on sub-6 deployment, there’s still another wave of infrastructure updates that have to happen before the full promise of 5G can be fulfilled. The new networking standard holds a lot of promise for industries like smartphones and laptops, as well as the likes of VR and game-streaming. But if companies continue to pollute the news cycle with petty squabbles over who gets to be first, consumers will be too fatigued by 5G to care about its benefits. And that’s not the way to kick off a new decade.
